Sustainability in Software Engineering and Business Information Management

Currently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been applied to the same development techniques as software. There have been opinions that the evaluation of the quality of AI software should be based on the element of AI software fairness. An unfair AI software is considered shoddy software. There is a lot of recent researches intending to make AI software fair, accountable and transparent. Therefore, it is extremely important to consider the issue of fairness while analyzing this kind of software. A big question is also raised. What is fair AI software? How to measure the fairness of a given AI software and how to test that fairness? This paper will summarize the concepts of fairness in AI software that have been introduced as well as the method of measuring and testing fairness in AI software according to those concepts. Based on an ad-hoc literature review, we summarize some recent findings in the area of requirement engineering for AI fairness and point out some research gaps.

Software reliability engineering (SRE) focus on engineering techniques for developing and maintaining software systems whose reliability can be quantitatively evaluated. Software operational profile (SOP) development is the first important step in software reliability testing process. Several approaches have proposed methodologies to generate the software operational profile. However, almost all the proposed studies have omitted the specificities of the new software paradigms, despite that these new paradigms are generally characterized by their own concepts, methods and methodologies. Multi-agent systems are one of these software paradigms. It will be more beneficial to propose a specific software operational profile development methodology instead of using a general one. In this paper, we propose a development methodology of a specific kind of multi-agent systems (called, normative multi-agent systems). This methodology is described gradually using a case study.

Intelligent Embedded Systems (IES) represent a new discipline in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coupled with Embedded Systems (ESs) in order to create a new self-X-based Embedded Systems generation. Self-X capabilities, like: self-repair, self-awareness, self-adaptation, etc. brought, for an ES, the ability to reason about their external environments and, as a result, adapt their behavior appropriately. Also, self-repair capability defines the fact of identifying and repairing failures in order to avoid the high cost of the ordinary repair process. FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) provide support for implementing the self-repair capability based on FPGA Partial Reconfiguration (PR) feature. Despite that there are many approaches which proposed self-repair processes, the measurement aspects are often omitted. Indeed, the measurement allows controlling the repair process and comparing the different approaches. In this paper, we discuss the self-repair capability measurement by proposing a common FPGA PR self-repair process followed by a set of hardware (HW) and software (SW) metrics dedicated particularly for FPGA PR-based IES.

Gender equality, as a part of SDGs, is gaining research attention due to the desire to promote female participation in the engineering sector. The objective of this work is to enhance the understanding of female students’ participation in software engineering projects to support gender-aware course optimization. Since 2015, we have investigated the activity profiles of female students in terms of software engineering activities in a fourth-year software project course. Empirical evidence has been collected through surveys, structured interviews and project reports from 39 projects. We found that the active activity areas of female students are project management and requirement engineering, while the areas lacking active involvement are architecture and Scrum methodology. While the findings differ from those of some previous studies, they suggest which course and project settings will facilitate the active participation of females in such project courses.

Large companies are increasingly faced with the dilemma of balancing between their economic performance and sustainable environmental and social impact. The recent development of information and communication technology (ICT) has certain implications on achieving cooperates sustainability goals. Although both the theory and literature on sustainable development is rich, there is a gap on empirical cases which provide practical insights on the challenges for companies, particularly the technology-focused ones. Our objective is to explore the sustainability challenges for a large software technology company that operates platforms and digital services. We conducted an exploratory case study based on various sources of information. By matching the company’s sustainability goals with the observed initiatives and product characteristics, we revealed insights on five different challenges at the organizational level. The study has implications for both research and practice on sustainability dilemmata in the ICT sector.

One of the main factors influencing job satisfaction for employment that require onsite presence is location. We analysed 3,355 jobs in Information Technology (IT) published on LinkedIn’s South Africa website with the aim of identifying the leading locations for IT jobs in South Africa, as well as the names and industry sectors of the recruiting companies. Three (of the nine) provinces accounted for 91% of all IT job vacancies in South Africa, namely Gauteng (46.7%), Western Cape (39.4%) and KwaZulu-Natal (4.8%). Analysis of job distribution by cities revealed that Cape Town was home to 33% of all IT jobs in South Africa, followed by Johannesburg (24%) and Pretoria (3%). The Northern Cape province had the fewest IT job openings, followed by the Free State and Limpopo. Overall, the three most in-demand IT jobs were DevOps Engineers, Software Engineers and Data Engineers. Among the companies with the largest number of IT jobs, DigiOutsource came first, followed by takealot.​com and impact.​com. Five out of the top ten IT jobs advertised came from companies in the Staffing & Recruiting industry. The conclusions have practical implications for a variety of stakeholders, including businesses, governments, educational institutions, IT students and IT professionals.

Currently, the hospitality business is facing severe challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing hotels to quickly adapt to a new operational reality and address in a critical way the sustainability challenge. Such adaptation requires redefining the current business models since they are not adequate for the present global scenario. The study primary goal is to analyse the main impacts of COVID-19 in the hospitality business and propose a general reinvented business model, aiming to contribute to the hospitality industry’s reinvention in the global scenario. A literature review was developed to fulfil these objectives, and an in-depth interview was conducted with 14 professionals who work at different hotels. The obtained results demonstrated the reinvention of the hotels’ business model must include significant investment in technology and digital communication since these two are vital for the industry’s growth and evolution by providing customers with a sense of trust.

Software Project Management is a topic that is rarely found in the call for papers at Software Engineering conferences. This combined with the fact that most software project managers have not been trained in management methods has resulted in software project managers adopting methods that they believe are beneficial but are not. This is not a sustainable situation as software projects are becoming more expensive with far reaching consequences for failure. This paper cites some of the more common fallacious methods and provides published references refuting their presumed benefits together with suggestions as to how to improve the current state of affairs.

In the health system, the adoption of Informatic and Communications Technologies (ICTs) are becoming visible, with more heterogeneity and interoperability between Information Systems (IS) and medical data. The technological revolution enhances interoperability between Health Information Systems (HIS) as a new challenge to achieve sustainability. Thus, this study aims to explore and analyse the communication between information systems in Portuguese hospitals.

This study follows qualitative research, sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals and hospital suppliers to collect their experience on interacting with HIS, the stakeholders’ role, and the measures that are considered crucial to improve the current paradigm. The subsequent analysis was supported with the MAXQDA program to organize and identify the interviewees’ keywords, explanations, and views.

The key findings of the study were the inadaptation of public hospitals’ board to manage HIS and promote sustainability, the importance that healthcare professionals have in the implementation of new HIS in hospitals and the lack of interoperability between the systems resulting in slower and complex navigation for the user.

To achieve successful interoperability between HIS, hospitals need to have a clear hospital strategy focused on the digitalization of processes. Providing an IT structure that supports the implementation and management of the systems, managing the relationship with the hospital’s suppliers, and encouraging the healthcare professionals to involve and use this technology. Further research needs to consider a larger sample and other research methods to identify new constraints and opportunities about this topic.

A Great Resignation is going on. Workers are leaving their jobs at rates never seen before. They do it under economic circumstances never experienced by a whole generation of workers: the highest inflation rates in more than 40 years, in presence of the longest period of low interest rates and with apparently overvalued stocks and real estate markets. Not surprisingly, in such scenario political discontent arises, leading to an unprecedented success of populists’ proposals at political elections. To this date, mainstream theories at economic, business management and political levels appear unable to fix the multiple existing economic and social problems. In this paper, it is argued that the use of information and communication technologies provides with new perspectives for business management, in terms of relocation of workers at different geographic settings, but also establishing different contractual situations with their (former) employers and performing different functional-related tasks at the value chain level. That is, uncertain times bring new opportunities for younger workers, who may opt to live as digital nomads, locating their residence where less taxes need to be paid. Renouncing to work for a company, they can establish their selves as freelancers, self-employed or entrepreneurs, with the aim of offering their services to companies or individuals located anywhere, while developing a more nuanced knowledge of companies and industries. Developing these new business management perspectives requires, however, a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurial intentions relate to other factors, such as political positioning, human values or religious feelings.

The use of Information Technology (IT) in construction projects is essential for the development of the company’s works. This study aims to evaluate the use of IT in the construction industry in the Sultanate of Oman. It also seeks to identify the programmes primarily used in the construction industry, the factors that affect the use of IT, and the approaches to overcoming the barriers to using this technology in construction projects. Initially, an interview was conducted with professional engineers and contractors in the selected construction industry and Ministry of Housing related to implementing IT. Then, an electronic questionnaire was completed, and the data collected from the questionnaire were analysed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). In general, the analysis showed that all interviewees had a clear understanding of the importance and scope of IT in the construction industry; however, there were still several barriers to its implementation. The results showed that the most common obstacle that reduces the use of IT in the construction industry in the Sultanate of Oman is the weak capabilities of employees in the use of IT. Also, we found that the primary strategy that might help reduce the barriers to using IT in construction projects is to intensify courses in the use of IT. Finally, the results of our study might help the decision-makers in ministries and construction projects in the Sultanate of Oman towards improving the construction sector.

While knowledge and methodologies on how to estimate and measure benefits for business initiatives have advanced, it is uncommon to apply this knowledge and methodologies to HR initiatives, particularly training projects. As HR executives need to justify the effectiveness of their training investments and whether they generate any return for employees and the organization’s business goals, knowing how to measure ROI in training projects is becoming a critical skill. This study presents the main findings on the current practices of ROI measurement in training projects used by organizations. The study concluded that while levels 1 and 2 (reaction and learning evaluation) are frequently used, the remaining levels (impact, application, and ROI analysis) are often neglected. The article also provides recommendations and directions for future research on the topic.